As I’ve said before, I’ve read many business plans in my day and they all usually stink. They’ll say something like, “This location brings a lot of tourists that we can market to.” And that will be it. They don’t bother to mention exactly how they plan on marketing to those tourists. I read an interesting article at BusinessWeek.com that confirmed my belief in good planning.
This article tells the story of two brothers, John and Tony Calamunci, who dreamt of owning their own chain of hot dog restaurants. But they waited over 25 years before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. Why? Because they wanted to do it just right, planning every detail.
When I say they planned every detail, I’m not kidding. They hired a Mapinfo, a location research consulting firm that did vast and detailed location analysis. The firm identified their target customer as college students and lower-to middle-income families with children. With this knowledge they then identified 4,500 possible locations nationally that would be right for their business.
I know that a lot of small company owners like to get down to business. They like to open their doors and work out the details afterwards. But judging by the quick growth of Johnny’s Lunch Franchise, I think that all that planning might be the right way to go. Planning everything from the type of fax machine (I recommend email fax) to who you want as your neighbors makes all of the difference in hitting your growth projections.
Relevant Tags:business planning, entrepreneurship, food industry, small business, startup